Slide 02 - In what ways does my media product use, develop or challenge forms and convetions or real media products?

Here is how the front cover of my finished media product compares to that of the professionals.

Magazine Title: Both the product of the professional and my finished product have the title in the same placement area, at the top left of the page. Both texts have a clear bold outline which highlights the text and makes it clearer to the audience, however the colours used to outline the text of NME's logo in comparison to that of my media product are very different. NME's logo colours contrast in order to make the text clear and to make the text standout where as in my media product i chose to outline the text in the same colour as I'd used for the actual text as this represents the darker hardcore nature of my magazine. The title of NME is also pretty matt where as my titles text shows a ripple effect which makes the text look almost as if its shining and had a metallic nature about it. Altogether making the magazines overall image look more grungy and dark but also allowing for a clear definition between the text and the outline.

Main Image: Both my media product and that of the the professionals feature a main image which cover the entire page of the magazine, and therefore becomes the focal point which attracts the audience. However NME clearly choose to use photo studios for taking their images wheres i decided to take a more rawral approach with my images and take the majority of them in an outside setting. This image was edited using Adobe Photoshop in order to give the image a more professional finish. Due to using a non digestic lighting source of my flashgun my image became rather bright and many features were lost however by adapting the images with photo shop and suing the editing tools to control and enhance and decrease the shadows and lighting of the image many details which had been lost or were hard to make out became clearer and more enhanced. For my main image i also used photo shop to heal the pictures which removed any unwanted flaws not just in the model but also within mis-en-scene. Photoshop elements 8.0 offered me an advanced feature which selected certain elements of the overall image and then selected a feature which would be applied to this area. The first of which i used was the details feature which highlighted the featured of the models face and clothing and showed a great effect in making the image look more like that of an image which would be found in a magazine. The advanced feature was also used to make the background of the image more dark and grungy by darkening the brick wall. Overall my image began by looking like the image on the left but my final image looked like the image on the right. It was this image which i included within my magazine.

Main Headlines: My media products main headline is situated towards the bottom right of the page but reflects the topic of the main image, the title is a similar placement to that of NME being just slightly off center. However to keep the house style of my magazine the headline text of my magazine features an outline and the font is the same as that of which the title was created using. Like with NME my media product includes a small caption beneath the main headline which annotates and captured what the main story is about. The colours used within my media products main headline allow it to clearly stand out against the back ground and on the overall page although still keeping the title in theme with the rest of the magazine. the magazine will spend the most amount of money on paying for their main story, which has to be covering an artist which the majority of the target readers would be interested in but at the same time would possibly attract other readers who may not fall into the target catagory.

Other Stories: Both products include information on inside fillers such as titles and a small quote from the person which is being interviewed in the article in question. The quote on both is no more than a few words which make up a small phrase which pretty much sums up what the article. However the placement is different as in the professionals media product these are situated along the right side whereas in my media product they are along the left. These stories are usually on smaller bands which the readers would still be interest in and would have an interest to gain knowledge on but are not the main focal band for this weeks issue. they are in text boxes in my magazine to make them stand out whereas NME chooses to let them stand alone. simply using outline boxes which make the words look almost as if they've been highlighted rather than put into a text box.

Top banner: Both my media product and that of the professionals includes a top banner which stretched across the top of the page, the banner measures about 2 cm's thick and includes information on artists which are included within the magazine, The banner is clearly defined amongst the rest of the cover. As it stands out in a contrasting colour to the main image and to that of the colours used for the date and url address which surround the main title.

Bar code: the placement of the bar code is another similarity between my magazine and NME both having the bar code located at the bottom of the screen however my bar code is to the bottom and runs horizontally where as NME's bar code runs vertically.

Both magazine include a URL address for the magazine and a date however the placement is very different, I chose to make both of these a dominant factor on my cover whereas NME choose to locate theirs at the bottom of the page within the confines of the same box which houses their bar code. This is also where you can fin the magazines issue number within both my media product and the professional product.

This is a link to a previous post which shows evidence of analysis of NME: http://tashar-twilight.blogspot.com/2010/02/11-january-10.html